vs
2:0
overall capability wins (0 ties across 2 scored). Sonar Reasoning leads overall.
- Pricing0:3
- Speed0:1
- Specs2:0
Verdict
Sonar Reasoning offers ~10.6x larger context (127K vs 12K); Sonar Reasoning allows ~2.0x more max output (8K vs 4K); Sonar Small is ~10.0x cheaper on a blended token basis than Sonar Reasoning.
- Sonar Reasoning offers ~10.6x larger context (127K vs 12K)
- Sonar Reasoning allows ~2.0x more max output (8K vs 4K)
- Sonar Small is ~10.0x cheaper on a blended token basis than Sonar Reasoning
Cost for 1M in + 250K out
Illustrative chat workload at primary-provider list prices.
- Sonar Reasoning
- $2.25
- Sonar Small
- $0.25
Sonar Small is about 9.0x cheaper on this workload.
Price per 1M tokens
Full comparison
Organization
Perplexity
Perplexity
Family
Sonar
Sonar
License
Proprietary
Proprietary
Open weights
No
No
Release
Jan 27, 2025
Mar 14, 2024
Knowledge cutoff
-
-
API / provider
Perplexity
Perplexity
Modalities
text → text
text → text
Specs
Context window
127K
12K
Max output
8K
4K
Parameters
—
—
Pricing
Input $/1M
$1
$0.20
Output $/1M
$5
$0.20
Blended $/1M (3∶1)
$2
$0.20
Speed
tok/s
60
90
TTFT (s)
1.5
1.5
Reasoning
MMLU-Pro
—
—
GPQA Diamond
62.3
—
Humanity's Last Exam
—
—
AIME 2025
—
—
MATH-500
92.1
—
Humanity's Last Exam (with tools)
—
—
AA-Omniscience Accuracy
—
—
AA-LCR v1.1
—
—
CritPt
—
—
MMMU-Pro
—
—
IFBench
—
—
Chartography
—
—
Chartography (With Tools)
—
—
Coding
SWE-bench Verified
—
—
SWE-bench Pro
—
—
SWE-bench Multilingual
—
—
LiveCodeBench
—
—
Terminal-Bench 2.1
—
—
Aider Polyglot
—
—
Terminal-Bench 3
—
—
BigCodeBench
—
—
SciCode
—
—
CursorBench
—
—
SWE-Rebench
—
—
NL2Repo-Bench
—
—
DeepSWE
—
—
WebDev Arena
—
—
Terminal-Bench 4.0
—
—
CursorBench 4.0
—
—
FrontierCode v1.1 (Main)
—
—
Arena
LMArena Elo
—
—
| Metric | Sonar Reasoning | Sonar Small | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | |||
| Organization | Perplexity | Perplexity | — |
| Family | Sonar | Sonar | — |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary | — |
| Open weights | No | No | — |
| Release | Jan 27, 2025 | Mar 14, 2024 | — |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | - | — |
| API / provider | Perplexity | Perplexity | — |
| Modalities | text → text | text → text | — |
| Specs | |||
| Context window | 127K | 12K | A +115K |
| Max output | 8K | 4K | A +4K |
| Parameters | — | — | — |
| Pricing | |||
| Input $/1M | $1 | $0.20 | B +$0.80 |
| Output $/1M | $5 | $0.20 | B +$4.80 |
| Blended $/1M (3∶1) | $2 | $0.20 | B +$1.80 |
| Speed | |||
| tok/s | 60 | 90 | B +30 |
| TTFT (s) | 1.5 | 1.5 | tie |
| Reasoning | |||
| MMLU-Pro | — | — | — |
| GPQA Diamond | 62.3 | — | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | — | — |
| AIME 2025 | — | — | — |
| MATH-500 | 92.1 | — | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam (with tools) | — | — | — |
| AA-Omniscience Accuracy | — | — | — |
| AA-LCR v1.1 | — | — | — |
| CritPt | — | — | — |
| MMMU-Pro | — | — | — |
| IFBench | — | — | — |
| Chartography | — | — | — |
| Chartography (With Tools) | — | — | — |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified | — | — | — |
| SWE-bench Pro | — | — | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | — | — | — |
| LiveCodeBench | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | — | — | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 3 | — | — | — |
| BigCodeBench | — | — | — |
| SciCode | — | — | — |
| CursorBench | — | — | — |
| SWE-Rebench | — | — | — |
| NL2Repo-Bench | — | — | — |
| DeepSWE | — | — | — |
| WebDev Arena | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| CursorBench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| FrontierCode v1.1 (Main) | — | — | — |
| Arena | |||
| LMArena Elo | — | — | — |
Sonar Reasoning
- Context
- 127K / 8K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $1 / $5
- Speed
- 60 tok/s · 1.5s TTFT
- Modalities
- text → text
- License
- Proprietary
Perplexity's grounded reasoning API with live web search — mid-tier before Sonar Reasoning Pro.
Sonar Small
- Context
- 12K / 4K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $0.20 / $0.20
- Speed
- 90 tok/s · 1.5s TTFT
- Modalities
- text → text
- License
- Proprietary
Early Perplexity online SKU (sonar-small-online) — lightweight search-grounded chat before the current Sonar family.
Benchmark charts
Winner bars are emphasized. Per-benchmark deltas sit above each chart.
These two models have no overlapping published benchmarks in our dataset. Compare specs and pricing instead.